Seagate closes Samsung HDD business buy

Seagate has completed its £890m takeover of Samsung's hard disk drive division, following regulatory approval.

Following a brief investigation, the European Commission cleared the takeover in October without imposing any conditions on it. Seagate said on Monday that it had now taken over Samsung's M8 product line of high-capacity 2.5-inch HDDs, along with other assets.

"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," Seagate chief Steve Luczo said in a statement.

The takeover, announced in April, was one of several deals between Samsung and Seagate that were announced at the time. Seagate now supplies Samsung with PC, notebook and consumer disk drives, while Samsung supplies Seagate with semiconductors for its enterprise SSDs and solid-state hybrid drives.

The two firms also have various patent cross-licensing agreements.

According to the statement on Monday, "Seagate will retain certain Samsung HDD products under the Samsung brand name for 12 months, and maintain or establish a number of independent operations including sales staff, key production lines and R&D".

The $1.4bn (£890m) takeover marks, along with Western Digital's £2.8bn purchase of Viviti/Hitachi Global Storage Technology, a year of consolidation in the storage industry.

The Viviti buy got a harder time from the European Commission, with regulatory approval coming only after Western Digital promised to sell off its own 3.5-inch HDD business to allay competition concerns.